An Expression of Who We Want to Be
THE SHOCK ABSORBER
The Orange That Changed Everything
Stuart remembers the day vividly. He'd just received permission to teach scripture at a local high school in the Sutherland Shire. First day, standing in the playground with his Bible, ready to invite students to hear about Jesus. Then—thwack. An orange hit him square in the head.
"It was pretty hard," Stu recalls with a laugh. "I took a Panadol later that day."
But here's what makes the story remarkable: that kid eventually came back. Not just came back, he became a Christian.
"I think he was watching to see what I'd do," Stu reflects. "The fact that I responded the way I did, I think he didn't expect it. So that caused him to be curious."
This small story encapsulates something Soul Revival Church has been intentionally partnering with Jesus to build: a community where the Christian life isn't compartmentalised into "evangelism strategies" and "discipleship programs," but expressed as an integrated whole. Where meals aren't missional tactics but genuine friendship. Where joy isn't manufactured but organic. Where being unapologetically Christian becomes more attractive than trying to be cool.
The Disappearing Church Kitchen
A recent Christianity Today article caught the Soul Revival team's attention: church kitchens across America are vanishing. Not just underused, but completely scrapped in new construction and remodels.
The piece describes the shift: "Newly built or remodelled churches typically have a space with a sink and a coffee pot, possibly a microwave, but no expanse of countertop suitable for chopping carrots, potatoes and onions to go into a big pot of soup."
Gone are the cupboards labeled "forks and knives, spoons and serving utensils." The large fellowship halls that once hosted potlucks and church dinners now feel "kind of empty" when not in use. Church architects are pivoting toward co-working spaces, childcare co-ops, and other community-facing facilities.
The article's conclusion? "In the past, church needs were met in the kitchen, but now people seem hungry for something else."
Stu grew up in the era of fellowship teas, post-service gatherings where the entire congregation would stay for a meal. "Cut sandwiches and little party pies," he remembers. "It was all very '70s and very simple food, but it was just delightful."
These weren't elaborate events. They were weekly rhythms. Before the 1960s, this was simply what Christians did. "Pre-industrial churches were places where people came for discipleship and mission," Stu explains. "People used to go to church twice on a Sunday. They didn't go to work, they had no sport. They were there all day, actually. So they'd slowed down."
It was what happened when the people of God gathered around the Word of God and then... stayed. They ate together. They learned how to navigate community together. Children like young Stu learned how to interact with different personalities, how to be Christian in community.
Learning from others
When Soul Revival started in the late 1990s, they were a group of friends hanging out on Saturday nights. They weren't trying to be a church, they were just mates who centred their friendship around the Bible. And because they were friends, they ate together. First it was takeaway pizzas. Then massive pots of pasta cooked in someone's garage.
"We didn't think of connecting that dinner to church," Stu explains. At the time, they attended a Sunday service elsewhere that had no meal component. The connection didn't occur to them until they met Isaac and Eileen, Aboriginal Christian leaders in Brewarrina in rural New South Wales.
"When I went out to Brewarrina, I really enjoyed going to church with them, which lasted a lot longer than we went to church," Stu recalls. "But also at the end of the service, we had dinner together and I'm like, 'This is great. I love this.'"
The Incarnational Trap
For decades, youth ministry and church planting models have operated on an "incarnational" principle: meet people where they are. Create neutral spaces. Earn the right to be heard. Don't be too overtly Christian too quickly because you'll scare people off.
In the 1980s Sutherland Shire where Stu grew up, this often meant Christians spiritualising their presence at pubs and live music venues. "There was a sense that, 'Oh, we go to church for the Christian thing, and then we go and evangelise to the people who won't come to church when they're in the pub,'" he recalls.
The problem? "I just saw a lot of people being evangelized into the pub scene, not anyone coming back the other way."
The incarnational model created a funnel: casual social events funneled people into Bible studies, which funneled them into church services. The assumption was that you needed intermediary steps because church was too foreign, too weird, too off-putting for outsiders.
What if we just invited people to church?
Not to a halfway house. Not to a Christianized version of pub culture. Just... church. With the Bible. And a meal afterward. "Let's bring back the action into the church," Stu proposed. "And why don't we have a bit more confidence? Instead of feeling like we have to earn the right to be heard, I think we just live confidently as Christians."
So Uncool It's Cool
When grunge was exploding and Kurt Cobain wore pyjamas on stage, Stu noticed something. "They weren't trying to be INXS or Guns N' Roses, they were Nirvana. And because they were so confident in that, that became cool."
Similarly, the Black Panthers in the 1960s rejected the previous generation's strategy of straightening hair and dressing "white" to succeed in American society. Instead, they leaned into their African-American identity, which meant afros, leather jackets, berets.
He applied this logic to Christian ministry. "When I'm walking into Kirrawee High School, when I've got my Bible in the early '90s, I'm like, 'This is the word of God. Like, this is the coolest thing ever. This is where the action is, being with Jesus.'"
Young people who were drinking underage, going to clubs, living the "free" lifestyle started showing up at Soul Revival. "Man, you guys are cooler than my friends," they'd say. "Like, you guys have gone nuts. You're enjoying life."
Interestingly, some observers called Soul Revival "the best incarnational ministry they'd ever seen" because surfers were becoming Christians.
The Pool Table at Black Stump
Soul Revival in its early days had picked up a busted pool table from the side of the road. It became a treasured part of their garage gatherings. When someone donated a full set of balls, it was "the cause of much rejoicing."
In the mid-1990s, they took the pool table to Black Stump, a Christian music festival. While other attendees tried to look cool listening to Christian bands, Soul Revival set it up in the middle of the festival and just... played pool.
One night it was raining. A respected youth minister approached the Soul Revival crew and asked what they were doing.
"We're playing pool."
"Well, why are you doing it here?"
"Because that's where we are."
"So you carry a pool table around?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
"What are you trying to achieve? What's the strategy?"
"We're just playing pool, man."
This youth minister, didn't have a category for it for what they were doing. Many teenagers, many recently converted from lifestyles of drug use and promiscuity, some still smoking cigarettes, publicly celebrating their Christian identity by doing something objectively uncool (playing pool in the rain at a Christian music festival) without a trace of irony or strategy.
It culminated when some of the group spontaneously decided to run laps around the crowd carrying the pool table and waving homemade flags in the Jesus bead colours. They interrupted the main stage speaker. The crowd started booing.
But the speaker, Fuzz Kiddo, stopped them: "Stop booing. This is wonderful. These boys are so excited to be Christian that they want to run around with a pool table."
The Airport Goes Viral
Fast forward to 2025. Soul Revival's Late Night team, organised a trip to Sydney International Airport. The plan? Welcome strangers arriving in Australia with cheers and celebration.
They cheered for cabin crew. They danced. They celebrated every person coming through arrivals as if they were long-lost friends. Then they met a nervous man waiting to meet his online girlfriend for the first time. "Can you cheer for her when she gets here?" he asked.
They stayed. When she arrived, Soul Revival erupted in celebration.
An influencer captured the whole thing on video.
Answer: they were there for the vibes. Or more accurately, they were there to share the joy they already had.
"We're here to celebrate and welcome people," Ethan told the group beforehand. "We're not here to scare or be silly or annoy." The posture was critical.
One viewer assumed it was a political statement about immigration. But there was no statement. Just Christians being joyfully, publicly Christian in a way that blessed strangers. Ethan reflects. "It was just to bring joy and be celebratory for nothing in particular other than the joy that we already have as a Jesus shaped community and going, 'Well, let's share that with complete strangers in a really fun, silly way.'"
Bringing Discipleship and Mission Back Together
The deeper issue, Stu argues, is that modern evangelicalism has separated discipleship from mission.
"Somewhere along the lines, we've exported out discipleship and mission from the church service," he explains. "But the problem is, we turn around and wonder why people don't come to church anymore".
Soul Revival's approach: church is both. The service includes the Word, sacraments, prayer, and singing. Then everyone's invited to stay for a meal. Discipleship and mission happen simultaneously as Christians practice hospitality, as newcomers observe how believers interact, as relationships form naturally over food.
When Ethan went on college missions to other churches, he was shocked by the absence of meals. "I didn't realise that I would feel so weird about going to church and not eating until I went to churches and didn't eat."
At one church, young people went to the pub after the service. Good friendships happened there, but it segregated the community by age and stage. "At one of the beautiful things we have at Soul Revival is that I will have dinner with someone that I am not like at all in age or stage or gender," Ethan notes. "Whereas the group that went to the pub were all mates."
The Theology of Joy
Tim raises the question: Is joy a strategy, or something deeper?
The answer is: both. And neither.
Joy flows from our theology, the wonder that Jesus has saved us, that we're reconciled to God, that death is defeated. It manifests strategically in creating third-place communities where, as sociologist Ray Oldenburg observes, "laughter is frequent." And it's practiced in ways that can seem ridiculous: running in circles during worship songs, moshing to acapella bands, celebrating strangers at airports.
When Soul Revival recently hosted a gig with Seraph at Kirrawee, the band's bass player was amazed. "Usually I have to get the crowd going but instead I spent the whole gig trying to keep up," he told them. The crowd was losing their minds from song one, singing, jumping, crashing into each other.
"At one end, it is just silly and fun and crazy and wild," Ethan reflects. "But on the other hand, it's really thought through. I think these conversations about food or about joy or about preaching in weird places, they all have really great reasoning behind everything we do. But we also just do it 'cause it's fun."
A Different Path Forward
The Christianity Today article concludes that churches are "adapting" by removing kitchens in favor of spaces that "serve their communities" through childcare and co-working. The logic is incarnational: what does our community need? Let's provide that.
It's not wrong. But it's operating from different premises.
Soul Revival's approach asks: What do friends do? They eat. What does Christian community look like? People gathering around the Word of God and then around a table. What's the most natural way to integrate newcomers? Invite them to see what Christians are actually like, in the service and at meal times.
This only works in certain cultural moments. Right now, younger generations (Gen Z and Alpha) aren't rejecting Christianity the way many Millennials did. They're genuinely curious. "Hey, would you like to check out church and see what a Christian is like?" often gets a yes.
The meal extends that invitation. It says: we're not hiding. We're not presenting a sanitised, seeker-friendly version of Christianity and saving the "real" stuff for members. This is us. The Bible, the prayers, the songs, the messy conversations over sausage rolls and chicken sandwiches.
Sober Joy
One pushback that Stu anticipates: Doesn't this approach risk being shallow? All fun and games?
His answer: sober joy.
"There are sober times in the life of a community," Tim notes. "There is appropriate repentance of sin. There is appropriate mournfulness when sad things happen. There is mourning with those who mourn. And yet there is also joy."
Soul Revival's gatherings are liturgical, reverent, and theologically rich. They use the Anglican prayer book. They take the sacraments seriously. The worship is deep, not just hype.
But then at other times, at youth gatherings, at concerts, at airports, they let loose. Pentecostal friends are sometimes surprised by the energy. "If they could see how we worship to a live band, it's jumping up and down and running around in a circle and crowd surfing people," Stu laughs.
It's both/and. The sobriety and the celebration aren't contradictory. They're complementary expressions of a community that takes God seriously enough to also enjoy Him.
An Expression of Who We Want to Be
Underneath it all is something simpler and more profound: This is who we want to be.
Christians who are joyful enough to play pool in the rain. Who are secure enough in their identity that they don't need to earn the right to be heard. Who love Jesus enough to invite strangers to see what following Him actually looks like. Who value friendship so highly that eating together isn't optional, it's essential.
Or as the kid at Black Stump put it more simply: "We're just playing pool, man."
Listen to the full Shock Absorber episode expressing who we are as Christians being so uncool, it becomes cool
Discussed on this episode:
John Laws funeral
Michael Jensen sermon at funeral
Christianity Today: Church Kitchens Getting Chopped
No Guts, No Glory, by Ken Moser, Al Vaughan, Ed Stewart
Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, by Andrew Root
Soul Revival at the airport
Black Panther Party
Seraph Music
Soul Revival Church is an Anglican church in the Sutherland Shire and Ryde.